Egdon Heath (Extract from The Return of the Native）

Thomas Hardy

Activity 1

Think about the following questions, and write down your answers before reading the essay.

(1) What are some kinds of beauty you can name with examples?

(2) When you can’t see things clearly, will you depend on other senses?

Activity 2

Read the essay, and try to fill in the blank.

The beauty of the heath does not belong to the beauty of any ________ kind.

A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heathfor its floor.

The heavenbeing spread with this pallidscreen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood

1. Twilight is the time just before night when the daylight has almost gone but when it is not completely dark.

2. A heath is an area of open land covered with rough grass or heather and with very few trees or bushes.

3. “The heaven” or “the heavens” refers to the sky.

4. Someone or something that is pallid is pale in an unattractive or unnatural way.distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. The distant rimsof the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retardthe dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.

In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen,its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale.The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitatetogether could be perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitatedit. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced halfway.

5. The rim of a circular object is its outside edge.

6. If something retards a process, or the development of something, it makes it happen more slowly.

7. If you gravitate towards a particular place, thing, or activity, you are attracted by it and go to it or get involved in it.

8. If something precipitates an event or situation, usually a bad one, it causes it to happen suddenly or sooner than normal.

The place became full of a watchfulintentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis - the final overthrow.

It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity,impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. The qualifications which frequently invest the façadeof a prison with far more dignity than is found in the façade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly wanting.Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if times be not fair! Men have oftener suffered from, the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged. Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.

9. Someone who is watchful notices everything that is happening.

10. An admonition is a warning or criticism about someone’s behaviour.

11. The façade of a building, especially a large one, is its front wall or the wall that faces the street.

Activity 3

Read the essay again, and answer the following questions.

(1) How would you describe the sky and the earth as they were contrasted? (para. 1)

(2) What does “an instalment of night” mean in the context? (para. 2)

(3) Where does the true feel of the heath lie? (para. 3)

(4) What does “majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity” imply? (para. 5)

Activity 4

Study the words in bold. Complete the blank-filling task below.

(1) He walked out into the middle of the road, looking up at the h________.

(2) A slight mistake could p________ a disaster.

(3) Continuing violence will r________ negotiations over the country’s future.

(4) She particularly liked this round mirror with white metal r________.

(5) They returned at t________, and set off for one of the promenade bars.

(6) The best thing is to be w________ and see the family doctor for any change in your normal health.

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